To prune
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καθαίρω means to clean or prune, and in John 15:2 Jesus uses it inside the vine-and-branches picture. The Father, as the vinedresser, removes fruitless branches and prunes fruitful ones so they may bear more fruit.
Reader summary
Full entry for καθαίρω (G2508) · Open the biblical lexicon
καθαίρω means to clean or prune, and in John 15:2 Jesus uses it inside the vine-and-branches picture. The Father, as the vinedresser, removes fruitless branches and prunes fruitful ones so they may bear more fruit.
The BSB source-word alignment has 1 aligned row for this entry. Common renderings include He prunes (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at John 15:2. Its strongest book concentrations include John (1).
καθαίρω means to clean or prune, and in John 15:2 Jesus uses it inside the vine-and-branches picture. The Father, as the vinedresser, removes fruitless branches and prunes fruitful ones so they may bear more fruit. The word should be read in that agricultural and discipleship setting. It does not describe random pain, and it does not make suffering automatically sanctifying. It names the Father's purposeful work with those who belong to the fruitful branch imagery.
Pastorally, καθαίρω helps distinguish punitive fear from fruitful discipline. The Father is not careless with His people. He cuts away what hinders fruit, and His pruning is connected to abiding in Christ and bearing fruit. The word also stands near καθαρός in John 15:3, where the disciples are clean because of Jesus' word. The preacher should not blur the two terms, but the context lets cleansing and pruning work together: the word of Christ and the Father's care serve fruitfulness.
John 15:2 is the decisive New Testament use of καθαίρω: the Father prunes the fruitful branch so it may bear more fruit.
καθαίρω appears in John 15:2 inside Jesus' final-discourse teaching about the vine and branches. The Father is not a distant observer of fruitfulness. He is the vinedresser who acts. Fruitless branches are taken away, and fruitful branches are pruned. That distinction matters because the word is not about meaningless pain. It belongs to a picture of cultivated fruit.
The surrounding passage keeps the word from being misused. Jesus says the disciples are already clean because of the word He has spoken, and then He commands them to abide in Him. Pruning, cleansing, word, abiding, and fruitfulness belong together. A preacher should not isolate pruning from the relational center of the passage: life in the vine.
The pastoral value is strong. Some believers interpret every hard providence as rejection. John 15 teaches a different category: the Father's purposeful care can involve cutting away what hinders fruit. At the same time, not every painful event should be declared a specific pruning act. The passage gives a theological frame, not a license to explain every detail of suffering.
καθαίρω moves within John 15 from the Father's pruning action to the branch's deeper fruitfulness in Christ. Its theological force is not bare hardship, but purposeful cleansing and cutting away in the life of those who abide in the true vine.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. To cleanse by removing excess growth; pruning that promotes fruitfulness through strategic removal.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
2 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I cleanse, purify, prune
Read verseI cleanse, purify, prune
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How mood, tense, and voice shift the force of this verb in context.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
How this verb appears across 1 occurrences in the NT discourse index (MACULA Greek SBLGNT).
Aspect reflects grammatical form — not authorial emphasis. Participles and infinitives are verbal adjectives and nouns respectively.
Clause data: MACULA Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0) · SBLGNT (Logos/SBL, CC BY 4.0)
Where this word appears in Scripture: passage, original form, and sense in context.
καθαίρω is built from this root:
Divine discipline producing fruitfulness.
This word opens a careful teaching doorway on the Father's fruitful discipline of those who abide in Christ.
It corrects the assumption that all painful cutting is rejection, and it corrects careless claims that every hardship can be confidently labeled as divine pruning.
Frame καθαίρω from the vine image. Explain the Father, the branch, abiding, Jesus' word, and fruit before drawing pastoral applications.
MorphGNT Strong's Dictionary XML — CC0 1.0 Public Domain
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (morphhb/OSHB) — CC BY 4.0
Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon — CC BY 4.0
Berean Standard Bible (BSB) source-word alignment - CC0 Public Domain